


What Hasn't Changed

by light_source



Series: High Heat [46]
Category: Baseball RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, San Francisco Giants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 11:00:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/light_source/pseuds/light_source
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buster wakes up flat on his back, moaning and thrashing as he comes, his hand on his cock and his head heavy and hurting and full of things he doesn’t understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Hasn't Changed

**Author's Note:**

> Second part of _What It Feels Like._
> 
> This chapter picks up a thread about the relationship between Tim and Buster begun earlier in the _High Heat_ series, in chapters 1-5. This'll probably make a lot more sense if you've read that first. 
> 
> Or not ;-) Thanks for reading!
> 
> Revised 1/16/13.

**Dawn**  
 **October 20, 2012**  
 **UAL charter flight, STL - > SFO**

Abruptly the plane tilts over on itself, and a pink bolt of morning light blazes off the wing through the porthole window straight into Barry’s face. Zito blinks, his eyes gritty and sticky, and cranes to look through the window across Amber. She’s still sleeping, her seatbelt buckled over her snugged-up blanket. - _Shit, sun’s up already,_ he thinks, light-headed and groggy from lack of sleep. - _Too squarish for Tahoe, it’s gotta be Mono lake - the island -_

He settles himself back in his seat and focuses his exhausted eyes forward. A few rows towards the front, Tim’s arm is still slung across the top of the seatback, and now Zito can see the top of his head, hair roughed up from the long flight, a few long dark strands sticking up funny.

Looking at Tim’s hair, Zito sinks back into his daydream for a little. He remembers what it feels like, coarse and warm, alive in his hands. What it smells like.

And that’s when Zito becomes aware that someone else is awake on the plane and looking at him. It’s Posey, who's behind him, one row back and across the aisle.

With a jolt, Zito realizes Buster’s been looking at him like that for awhile, dead-on and unblinking. Without moving his head he can see: Posey’s sitting soldier-tall, his outside hand curled around the armrest. His eyes are narrowed like always these days, as though he’s screening what’s in front of him, his jaw set in judgment. White earbud wires dangle down in his open shirt. A hardback copy of _StrengthsFinder 2.0_ is splayed out face-down in his lap.

Slowly, deliberately, Zito turns his head and looks Buster straight in the face. When their eyes lock, the catcher’s dark blue eyes widen almost imperceptibly.

As they hold the gaze and test it, alone here together in the crowded dark, Zito’s skin starts to prickle with adrenaline.

For awhile it’s OK; Zito’s used to staring down batters and umpires and the occasional heckler. But Buster doesn’t blink or look away. As the pressure builds, Zito feels his whole body start to tense up.

He’s damned if he’s gonna be the first one to break the stare.

At the same time, he has to admire the way Buster’s always so watchful, wary, awake when everybody else is curled up like a kid, mouth-open asleep.

Eventually Buster lifts his chin a little, and his lips press together harder and wider over his teeth.

//

Buster’d put his book down to stretch again - nothing but misery in his lower back since he’d got up wrong the eighth - when he’d caught sight of Zito just ahead of him looking hard at something up front. As he’d hollowed and flexed his back, enjoying the way the muscles were pulling all the way across to his hipbones, he’d followed Zito’s line of sight forward and seen it: Lincecum a few rows up, his arm across the seatbacks, his index finger pointing out across the aisle into the dark.

_Zito’s still carrying the torch for Lincecum. Probably always will be, married or not._

Buster’d sighed.

He’d just finished taking the test in the back of the StrengthsFinder book, and he’d been trying to decide whether he was more of an _Achiever_ or an _Activator_ , or whether this was all just a pile of business-book bullshit, cause he likes _busy_ and _productive_ but not _impatient_. And hell, since he’d kinda cheated and read ahead about the themes, he couldn’t help being disappointed he wasn’t more of a _Maximizer_ -

Buster’s eyes’d traveled back to Zito, who was still staring at Lincecum like Barry was some kind of back-door bum and Timmy was the last piece of chicken on the plate. A slash of sunlight had lit up the edge of Barry’s face - a couple days’ ratty growth of beard, the beginnings of a double chin, hair as shaggy and overgrown as a patch of kudzu.

 _What the fuck does Timmy see in him,_ Buster’d found himself wondering for about the ten thousandth time.

But then Zito’d turned around, super quick, the way people do when they can feel you looking at them, and fastened his eyes on Buster. And after a few moments, the look turned into some kind of eye-lock Mexican standoff, Zito’s black-hole eyes drilling him.

The weird thing was the clarity with which Buster realized, at that exact moment, that Zito could see right into him. And what Zito was seeing in there wasn’t an _Achiever_ or a _Maximizer_ or even a _Discipline_ , but something that’s not on the list of the thirty-four themes. Not a strength at all, but something slippery and secret - something Buster doesn’t like to use words to describe.

//

_People strong in the Belief theme have certain core values that are unchanging. Out of these values emerges a defined purpose for their life._

Gerald Dempsey Posey 3.0 was raised in the land of cotton and soybeans and peanuts - Leesburg, Georgia, population less than three thousand,  _this is Braves country._ Teacher mom Traci, businessman dad Demp. He’s the oldest of the four kids, all ball players, two younger brothers Jack and Jess and one sister, Samantha, who’s incidentally a better hitter than any of her brothers.

Buster - the nickname is dynastic too - was the kind of kid who remembered his grandparents’ birthdays and stashed baseball cards under the mattress where other boys hid their Playboys. Elementary school, middle school, high school had just kind of fallen away from him like a cascade of shining curtains; he’d had that rare silicone-slick glow of a kid focused wholly on his his own path. Courted by half a dozen colleges, he’d decided to go to Florida State on a baseball scholarship. In Tallahassee, while he was tearing up the Atlantic Coast Conference and taking home every piece of hardware on offer, he’d maintained a 3.98 GPA. At a time when most college ballplayers with major-league aspirations were signing and leaving after junior year, Buster made a point of staying the fourth year and completing his business degree.

Playing for the garnet-and-gold had presented Buster with only one real problem: he’d had the darnedest time deciding which position he liked the best. Freshman year he’d played shortstop and batted .346 and it was all good. But sophomore year, during fall practices, Coach Martin had taken him aside and asked him if he wanted to catch. That winter he'd studied up, scouting reports stacked up on his desk next to his Econ and Marketing textbooks.

He'd moved from shortstop to catcher the following spring. The rush of calling games, of being in charge, got Buster through the beatings he had to endure as he learned to take pitches. He’d even done some pitching himself - he had a pretty good cut fastball and an above-average slider - figuring it was good to know the battery from that angle.

Maybe the most impressive performance of Buster’s young life came late in his junior year. In a single late-season game against Savannah State, he’d played all nine positions, including pitcher, striking out all the batters he’d faced. In that game, it was Buster’s grand slam that sealed the Seminoles’ 10-0 victory over the Tigers.

That night, he and his pretty blonde girlfriend-since-high-school had made love for the first time, on a blanket on the floor of her family’s lake cottage. By the time he got Kristen home that evening - punctual like always, five minutes before her one o’clock curfew - they were engaged to be married.

The wedding took place a little more a year later, four days after they’d both graduated from State, Buster with highest honors. In Leesburg, the heat of summer had already been upon them that morning in June; even the walk from the doors of First Baptist to the waiting limo seemed like it was happening underwater.

He and Kristen had decided to postpone the honeymoon because Buster was scheduled to fly up to Cape Cod later that week to play for the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox. Of the blur that was that weekend - the rounds of parties, the church ceremony with the white-and-yellow flowers, the wedding breakfast he wasn’t hungry for - Buster remembers one thing clearly.

Himself, fumbling with the deadbolt on the door of their brand-new custom three-bedroom, at the end of a cul-de-sac in a development recently carved out of a cornfield. His hands, too big for the key, were getting in his way. Kristen in a little white outfit she called her going-away suit, watching him, suddenly shy and holding herself back, hands clasped around her pocketbook. And then he’d realized what she was standing there waiting for. When he’d lifted her - light and flimsy as a bag of bird seed - and carried her over the threshold into the new-carpet-smelling entryway, he’d felt like a fireman rescuing a victim from the burning wreckage of a life that was all but gone.

//

Buster, who paid attention in school, would be the first to tell you that the original _actual_ Mason-Dixon line doesn’t even make it past the bottom left-hand corner of Virginia before it stops. But like so many other things about the South, the myth’s always gonna be way bigger than the reality. He knows there’s no point in getting bent out of shape about it.

Besides, all those baseball bus trips on the interstates have taught him that every town in America’s starting to look like all the others. You get off at a numbered exit and there’s gas stations on a double-lane with three stoplights. For places to eat, there’s a Popeye’s and a Waffle House and a Shoney’s. And nowadays, a Sonic and maybe a Macaroni Grill.

What hasn’t changed about life in Leesburg is the things that are too small for anyone who’s not from here to notice. Like that crowder peas and cream peas and black-eyed peas are not all the same. The way the heavy still summer air makes the seatcovers in your car smell like a herd of wet sheep. The way Annie in the post office fans out your mail on the counter like she’s dealing a poker hand, and looks at you a little too long when you sneak the fat envelope from Michigan out faster than the others. How when someone’s honking their horn at you in the Publix parking lot, they’re not saying outta my way, they’re saying hey. How old ladies can have first names like Plato and Franklin and no one blinks, it’s always just been that way.

Buster’s fine with what hasn’t changed. He likes that the Lee in Leesburg is for Richard Henry Lee, father of Robert E. Lee, the greatest general West Point ever produced. And when it comes to what he’s gonna do with his life, he appreciates that baseball’s the most traditional of all the big sports. When he thinks of baseball, he gets a mental picture of old brownish movies of guys with names like Early and Satchel, guys with crooked teeth and baggy trousers, rounding the bases in jerky fast motion. Baseball is proud to be square, just like Buster himself, who’d usually rather have a cold glass of tea than a Bud Light. He likes the way a lot of baseball’s rules are unwritten and you have to play awhile to really get what’s going on. He knows there’ll never be instant replay in MLB because baseball people know that electronic machines’ll never be a match for human eyes and ears.

Buster believes in the oddly shaped outfield.  He believes in ‘God Bless America’ and not rock-n-roll songs in the seventh-inning stretch.  And that it’s right and proper for a catcher to get his clock cleaned if he’s blocking the plate.

//

In February 2009, Buster gets a taste of what it’ll be like when he’s called up to the Show.

It’s an honor that the GIants have invited him to spring training straight out of college; he still can’t quite believe it’s true. But he’ll need to softpedal his skills awhile or risk pissing everybody off. Buster's heard the stories, and he knows that anything could set them off - how young he is, the part of the country he’s from, his record-breaking six million dollar signing bonus. Hell, they might just not like the way he folds his pants.

But spring training’s also basically a month-long job interview. Every day counts, every play, and Buster’s damned if he’s gonna hide his best stuff just to get in good with his teammates.

The day after he reports to Scottsdale for pitchers-and-catchers, the Giants' bullpen coach Mark Gardner assigns him to catch a bullpen for Randy Johnson. Yeah, _that_ Randy Johnson. By the sixth pitch Buster realizes he’s no longer trying to set up inside or outside or reach forward to snag the off-speed stuff - he’s just concentrating on getting out alive. From the corner of his left eye, through the slats in his mask, he can see that everyone’s stopped what they’re doing to come over and and watch the Big Unit rearrange the rookie’s face.

Later, as Buster’s toweling off from his shower, Barry ZIto - the guy who won a Cy with Oakland but hasn’t done much since - walks over to him.

\- Polka dots, Posey, he says solemnly, and slaps Buster on the ass with his towel. - It’s a good look on you.

Zito's voice is as soft and quiet as a boy’s.

The three pitchers Buster dresses between, Brandon Medders and Bob Howry and Jonathan Sanchez, are all grinning slyly, their eyes bulging like they’re trying to keep from laughing straight out. Across the room, the long-haired hippie-looking Tim Lincecum puts two fingers in his mouth and peals out a wolf-whistle.

Buster will not, _will not_ let them see him swallow or blink.

Zito’s still standing there in front of him, smiling and shaking his head. He claps Buster on the shoulder.

\- Ignore those assholes, says Zito, - it’s just their way of saying they think you’re cute.

Then Jonathan Sanchez, who’s handsome in a sulky kind of way, all pouty lips and dark eyes and waxed eyebrows, swaggers over and gets right up in Buster’s face.

\- Welcome to San Francisco, Bust-air, Sanchez wheezes through a hoarse bark of laughter. - Home of the love that does not dare to speak its name.

Buster, feeling the rage swell in his throat, turns a little to the side, faking like he’s gonna just walk away. Then he wheels and seizes Sanchez by the upper arms and rams him up against the cinderblock wall. The sound of Sanchez’s skull cracking against the cement gives him a certain amount of pleasure.

Not until later that night, when he’s stripped to his skivvies, brushing his teeth in the fluorescent light of the hotel bathroom, does Buster finally get Zito’s joke: his arms, his shoulders, his chest, the tops of his thighs are pocked all over with perfectly round bruises, each one a reminder of today’s lesson on keeping his head down and his mouth shut.

//

How he gets from there to here - sitting on an airplane staring down Barry Zito like they’re fighting over a girl - is a story Buster would be unlikely to believe. Except that he’s lived it, lived _in_ it, been made to _wear it_ in ways he’d never imagined possible.

He remembers a day back in high school, a Saturday morning Young Life meeting in the fellowship lounge of the Leesburg First Baptist Church. Pastor Tom Fielding and Mrs. Fielding had been leading the group in a discussion of first and second Corinthians. They were all supposed to be talking about the idea that _a Christian should walk in holiness and not after the flesh._

Buster hadn’t really paid that much attention to what everybody was saying until he’d looked across the circle at Kristen. She was sitting there between Mary Ruth Williams and Trey Greenleaf, her legs tucked sideways and her ankles crossed, in white sailor pants that ended just below her knees and that blue-striped top she’d bought on that trip to Chapel Hill. As he’d sat there he’d been struck by how amazingly beautiful she was, how perfectly made for him, from her long suntanned legs to the long silky hair that’d always gotten blonder in the summer from being out in the sun lifeguarding. At that moment he’d known, just known, that she’d be the mother of his children, the wife whose price was above rubies.

Someday they’d be cutting a fiftieth-anniversary cake together, surrrounded by their kids and grandkids and great-grandkids and more family than you can fit in the LCHS multipurpose room. That the grands and the greats would be calling Kristen _Meemaw_ and he’d be coaching the littlest ones in T-ball there had been no doubt.

//

It’s not that things aren’t working out the way he’d planned. It’s just that things are, well - complicated.

He’d like to blame it on Lincecum, all of it. But he knows from how he was raised (and from watching _Bull Durham_ ) that you should never say you were lured. You’ve got to take responsibility for your own actions.

Ironically, it’s exactly that phrase that trips him up and drags him back down into the vortex of things he’d sworn he’d never do.

//

**Spring Training, Scottsdale, AZ**  
 **Early February 2011**

When Buster rolls into the players' parking lot at the stadium, the Frosted Mini-Wheats he made himself himself eat for breakfast are starting to roil his stomach. In the pen, catching a bullpen for Matt Cain, his skin feels tight and jumpy under his gear, like he’s got a sunburn that makes him feel every flex of a muscle, every movement of arm or leg or neck. Even his fingers are buzzing, like he’s about to break out in some kind of crazy-ass rash.

When they’re done, after Rags gets a chance to make a few notes and give him some pointers, Matty walks off the mound towards Buster. He takes off his cap and wipes his brow with it, and then tucks it under his arm, the long orange brim poking out behind him like the bill of a cartoon duck.

\- You OK?  Cain asks. - Somethin’ buggin’ you?

Buster’s steadied by the calmness, the neutrality of Cain’s voice.

\- Yeah, I’m fine, says Buster, - I’m good, it’s all good. Nothing’s changed.

When Cain gives him an appraising look, Buster realizes he’s said too much.

//

But by the time Buster gets home after practice, he’s almost back to normal.

Tim had been apparently been working over at the minor-league park all day, and when Buster’d realized he’d be spared the awkwardness of running into the right-hander, he’d been able to buckle down and get to work. Catching three bullpens and a couple hours of bike and lifting have left him comfortably tired, the muscles in his legs and back warm, his hair still damp from the shower.

Buster’s been making an effort to cook healthy - he’s been working his way through a book on the glycemic index that Dave Groeschner gave him - so he pokes in his earbuds and launches Toby Keith’s _Bullets in the Gun_ on his iPod, cranking it up. He starts rifling through the cabinets of his little one-horse kitchen for what he needs, garlic and powdered ginger and vegetable oil.

He’s got the broccoli and the onions out on the counter and he’s rustling around the back of the bottom shelf of the fridge for that shrink-wrapped package of tri-tip when he hears someone shouting behind him. Startled, he stands up so quickly he bonks his head hard on the corner of an open cabinet door.

He swears and jumps back. There’s blood gushing down his forehead, sluicing off his eyebrows onto his shirt, his arms, the floor.

His earbuds pop out as his iPod tumbles out of his pocket and clatters to the floor.

Buster yanks off his reading glasses and hurls them aside in frustration. Groping around for something to stanch the bleeding, he grabs a dishtowel from the rack, wads it into a ball and jams it up against the gash on his forehead.

\- Head wounds always bleed like that, says a voice. 

It's Lincecum. He's materialized out of nowhere and is now standing there between the counter and the phone, - hey, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, but the door was open -

 _\- Jesus, Timmy,_ says Buster, and then he slumps right down onto the floor, his back up against the cabinets and his legs sticking straight out in front of him. The pain’s begun to bounce and echo around his skull. To make things worse, the tiny kitchen's billowing with steam; a pot of water on the stove is boiling so furiously that it rattles on the burner.

Lincecum reaches over Buster’s head and flips the burner off. Then he kneels down right in front of Buster and peers cautiously up into the catcher’s face. Buster’s not so far gone that he can’t be amused by how Tim’s dressed - long black shorts, a crewneck with the sleeves torn off, battered grayish Chucks and orange socks. His arms and legs are so pale that they’re practically fluorescent.

\- You OK?  Do I need to take you to the ER or something?

\- Get out of here, you stupid fuck, Buster snaps, - just leave me alone.

It works: Lincecum gets up, backs out of the kitchen and vanishes.

Buster lets out an angry sigh and surveys the floor around him, spattered with streaks and drops and even little pools of his own blood. He lifts the dishtowel off the wound for a second, but when he feels the blood well right back up, he presses it back on and starts crawling half-blind towards the cabinet where the paper towels are. He grabs a roll, and he's fumbling it with one hand, trying to poke his thumb through the plastic wrapper, when Buster realizes Tim’s come back into the kitchen. The right-hander plonks himself down on the floor in front of him.

Tim reaches over and gently tugs Buster’s tensed hand away from the gash.  He tosses the blood-soaked wad into the sink and presses something that feels like a folded-up washcloth against the cut.

It’s unbelievably awkward, the way they’re stuck sitting there on the bloodstained tile floor, Tim holding the cotton compress hard against the cut on Buster’s forehead, because apparently they can’t move without Buster like, bleeding to death or something.

So far Buster's managed to avoid meeting Tim's eyes. But now, when he finally does, he sees there's the smallest grin dawning on Tim’s face, and Lincecum says - you know, Posey, that blood all over you, you kinda look like one of those dead girls in _Delta Delta Doom_ -

When Buster can’t help smiling back, Lincecum’s grin gets wider, that sick crooked stoner-looking smile that for some reason gets Buster right in the gut.

Suddenly Buster's cut isn’t hurting that much any more.

Something else has taken over, the air getting slippery between the two of them. Tim’s sitting Indian-style, one of his bent knees up against Buster’s thighs, leaning in towards him.  Buster's becoming aware of Lincecum’s hand and wrist right next to his face, the way the heel of his hand is warm, pressing in just above Buster’s eye. He can smell Tim's skin, the smell of soap and boy sweat.

Tim’s face is close to his, the green eyes very, well, green.

\- You look really stupid in those shorts, says Buster ruthlessly, - you need to get some sun, or cover up or something so you don’t just go around blinding people.

\- Yeah? says Lincecum.

This strikes Buster as a really lame response, but before he can get something insulting out, Lincecum’s leaned forward, angling his nose rather expertly, and touched his lips to Buster’s.

Given what’d happened last night, Buster’s not surprised. But what's amazing is how much he likes it.  His cock stirs to life in his sweatpants, and he stretches forward, offering himself.

But then he feels it:  Tim's distance; his own disappointment. Tim’s mouth is hollow and cool and chaste, and when he takes Buster’s upper lip between his and kisses it softly, gently, Buster finds himself holding his breath, waiting. Tim’s skin is smooth and freckled and his mouth tastes like summer.

Buster wants more. _More._

Tim takes Buster's hand between his own thumb and fingers and presses it up against the washcloth.  He eases himself back and away, unfolding and reshuffling his long legs like a giraffe, and rises up to his feet. And then he disappears.

//

That night, what Buster dreams about is not what Pastor and Mrs. Fielding had in mind - Buster’s pretty sure about that.

The world of the dream is Leesburg, the vacant-lot field behind the Rollins brothers' feed barn. The grass is hip-high because it’s summer and the Rollinses have long since quit cutting that section for hay. He and Samantha and Joe Mack are crawling through the grass making tunnels, a maze that only they can navigate, a maze whose ends sprawl out towards the trees at the edge of the Landrys’ place and the ditch by the Leesburg-Albany road.

It’s so real that Buster can smell the grass.  It's sweet - a cross between bread and apples - still green and pliant because it hasn't yet been baked into straw by the blazing Georgia sun.

But then he’s lost Sam and Joey. Or maybe they were never really in the dream in the first place?

Suddenly their gone-ness is a blessing, though, because Tim’s there with him.

The two of them are stretched out on their backs in a spot where there’s a hollow carved out, the grass flattened into a bowl by deer who bedded down here last night.

In the dream the smell of the grass and Tim’s smell are the same, that smell of summer. They’re skin to skin, as bare and close as animals, their arms tangling them sideways and their hips pressed together, writhing.

What amazes Buster about the dream is the way it’s all his idea. He presses his mouth against Tim’s, and when it seems like Tim’s trying to say something, trying to speak, Buster jams his tongue between Tim’s lips and lets it do what it wants.

Tim's mouth is a doorway that Buster kicks open and strides through.  In the dream, when Tim’s leaning over him, his face contorted with desire, he laughs as Tim presses into his face, tries to force his own warm tongue down Buster's throat.

-I want you to beg, Buster hears himself saying. His mouth's poised over Tim's heaving belly and his hard, wet cock. - Beg, you fucker, I know you want it - 

Buster wakes up flat on his back, moaning and thrashing as he comes, his hand on his cock and his head heavy and hurting and full of things he doesn’t understand.

 

 

 

.


End file.
